probes_vs_zealot_2fandomcom-20200213-history
Guide:How to play a probe
Pro tips for Playing Probe #The goal is not to beat the other probes, the goal is to beat the zealot #Once the zealot starts doing 133 damage, he will grow much faster than you if allowed to attack freely for more than 5 seconds. If you do not stop the zealot early game, he will roll over you. #One strategy known as "Sell and Run" involves focusing on getting generator 6 while staying hidden. If you get found, run* #The best spells by a landslide are blink and void prison #When you defend your base, watch the zealot attack other bases, how quickly he is hurt, and what defences are there. Use that information to build a defence that will keep zealot feed below 5 seconds. #Don't even think about defending a gold base, the zealot can quickly heal at any time back at the shop. #If you are defending your base, even if you haven't been scanned or found, always build 4-8 turrets and set them to a hot key (Ctrl+5 for instance) so you can quickly upgrade them if you get scanned or found (tier 2 turrets are virtually free at gen 6+, tier 4 turrets are also cheap and require less time to upgrade) #If the zealot is getting strong and you are basing alone, immediately sell and head to a base with at least 1-2 more people to prevent more feed #If there are two major bases and one is significantly ahead, send minerals and gas to the other to help balance out defences to prevent the zealot from feeding at all #Never ever ever ever base at rich minerals (gold bases) #Play the market -- if prices are high, selling minerals (and building miners) is good. If prices are low, buying minerals is better. There is a spike in mineral cost when people get toward gen max, and mineral price becomes 20 after the first ultra miner comes out. #The best turrets are mass tier 6, tier 9, and tier 11+ (they do more damage for the investment). #Even if those are the best turrets, if the zealot is feeding any higher tier turret is better than the one you have. #You can quickly send extra minerals and gas to other probes with -v and -m with that probe selected. Use this to help people who are behind and could start feeding. *(exceptions to this rule are if you are basing with other people far away from the factory with many void prisons, generator 3+, and can build enough turrets to drive him off almost immediately, or if you are in a corner alone at generator 5 with turrets being built to drive him off and prevent him from coming back to feed right afterword) 15. To speed up generator upgrade, use the turret buff. It may be a bit expensive but you will be a generator away from others, if you don't want to do it, at least do it until the turret lvl2 because then it will also cost a market. 16. A common strategy is to base at gold at the fifth minute then stay there until you have a max generator. However if your original base is far from a gold base avoid this strategy, you could get caught by the zealot while moving. =Standard Build Order= Early Game Build Order Finding a Base At the start, build a generator by the factory. The generator is free and will immediately start producing gas for you. This allows you to upgrade your generator before the Zealot spawns. Run to a base far away from the centre of the map right after building the generator. Bases at the centre of the map are closer to where the zealot heals, and are quicker for him to find and come back to. Under no circumstances should you go to one of the "rich mineral" (gold mineral) bases. Generator 1-3 When you get to the base, build a wall in a corner away from a ramp. The zealot can see a wall on a ramp, so by moving the wall inside the base he is less likely to find you. This also gets the zealot further into your towers. Once you have built the wall, and have 45 vespene gas, sell the generator in the center (hotkey K). To do this faster, when you are running to the base you can set the generator in the middle to a hot key (e.g. CTRL-2) so you can just hit 2-k to sell the generator. Once the generator is destroyed, immediately rebuild the generator in a corner of your base, and select it and hit R to upgrade it immediately to Generator 2. Hot keys are as essential in Probes vs Zealot as it is in Starcraft itself. After getting generator 2, you have some downtime. You should learn skills if you haven't (Blink (hotkey L-C) and Void Prison (hotkey L-V) are highly recommended. You can also zoom out your vision a bit to give you an easier time seeing the map (type "-zoom 60" in chat). Upgrade your wall to wall 4, and once you have 100 gas, upgrade your generator again to generator 3. Generator 4-5 Once you start upgrading generator 3, sell your wall. Once it is sold, you should have enough gas to build a marketplace. This will allow you to upgrade to generator 4 once you have 200 gas. After generator 4 is finished upgrading, sell your marketplace and build another wall. Continue upgrading it until you get to Ultra Wall 1. If you are the fastest, you get 10 experience as a bonus. A notice will appear to all probes when someone builds the first Ultra Wall, if you are first or a few seconds later, you're doing very good. Once you have the Ultra Wall and 400 gas, you can upgrade to a generator 5. Generator 6 Generator 6 requires 32 minerals and an Underground Market. As soon as you have upgraded to generator 5, sell your ultra wall, and build a Market as fast as you can. As soon as the market is built, buy 30 or 40 minerals (hot key W for 10 minerals when the market is selected). Minerals begin at 155 gas for 10 minerals. Each time someone buys, the price increases by 5. The fastest person to build a market usually gets their minerals cheapest. By selling the Ultra Wall you will have enough to immediately buy 20 minerals (for 155 + 160 = 315 gas). Depending on how fast the other probes are, you may have to buy the next 10 for anything from 170 to 200. If you are first to buy (the minerals are still cheap) you should buy 40 minerals. People who aren't as fast will buy 30 minerals, and request the faster people to share minerals (they will make a resource request for 2 minerals using the resource sharing panel in the top right hand corner). Since you only need 32 minerals, you can give away 8 minerals. The next Generator Upgrade costs 64 minerals, so you may want to give away 4 and buy another 60 minerals depending on how the game is going. If you aren't fast, you should buy 30 minerals, and request that someone send you 2 minerals. Depending on the timing of your request and the state of the game, you may not get it and need to buy an additional 10 minerals. Once you have at least 32 minerals, use your gas to upgrade your Market to an Underground Market. Once you have 800 more gas, upgrade to Generator 6. Summary #Build generator at factory #Run to far away base and build a wall in the corner #At 44-45 gas (halfway between turning 44 and becoming 45) salvage your generator #Build a new generator in your base #Immediately upgrade it to generator 2 #Upgrade your wall to wall 4 #Upgrade to generator 3 #Sell wall 4 #Build market #Upgrade to generator 4 #Sell market #Build Ultra Wall #Upgrade to generator 5 #Sell Ultra Wall #Build Market #Get 32 minerals #Upgrade to Underground Market #Upgrade to generator 6 Beyond Generator 6 All generator upgrades beyond generator 6 require only wall upgrades. They also require minerals. After getting generator 6 you should build miners. Many probes will build a Collection Depot in a gold base and produce a few minerals immediately. Others who are far away from gold will just build in their base. If people are mining gold, mineral prices will go down, and it is possible to keep buying from the market. Additionally, when you get generator 6 you have the Underground Market which allows you to defend your base with higher level turrets. If you are interested in defending your base, or are basing with other people, this is a good time to build some defense. If you build Tier 5 turrets, you don't need an Underground Market to upgrade to Tier 6. Having 6 tier 5 turrets will allow you to quickly build up defense if the Zealot attacks. Since you don't need the market for upgrades, you will not need to sell your wall for minerals yet. That means this is a good time to move the wall to the ramp on your base in order to defend if you are building turrets. The most important key to success is to make sure that if you defend your base, you have enough fire power to drive off the zealot very quickly (less than 5 seconds, 9 if you have void prison). When the zealot attacks other bases, look at their defences and see how quickly the zealot gets hurt. Make sure you have as much as they do, otherwise you should keep hiding and hope you aren't found, base with someone else, or upgrade until you have as much defence as them. You also do not need the collection depot for anything more than making miners. At Gen 6, 256 gas is a lot of resources so selling it once you make your miners will give you a considerable economy boost. The ultimate goal is to get Generator Max as quickly as possible, and then to get Ultra Miners. But after Generator 6, a lot of what happens is determined by other probes and by the zealot. Do your best to have enough defence (or to hide, or base with others), while still managing to max your gen! Once you max your generator, you enter a very dangerous few minutes! Careless feed at this point can set a zealot with gas loose on a unsuspecting probe far from a T11. You should always get tanks as soon as you max your generator and build as many as you can, even if you haven't been attacked. Ultra Miner and Beyond After you have successfully built an Ultra Miner, you will need to either save the minerals to build a Tier 11 Turret to fight off the zealot, or build automated mines with them. Begin to build automated mine 3's(if you have space) or automated mine 4's(if you don't have space in your base) and save up gas until you can get a legendary miner (299999 gas). Generally everything past this point is a race to get a perfect miner; a Legendary Miner costs 4.2 times that of an Ultra Miner, but mines 6 times more minerals so make as few ultras as you can. After getting one Legendary Miner, you can begin to build automated mine 4's(if you have space) or automated mine 5's(if you don't). At this point, you have two choices that are the most efficient. You can save up gas all the way to a Perfect Miner, which is the fastest route to a maximized economy, or you can build a second Legendary Miner to get Tier 12 turrets to hold off the zealot, but only if you need to. Saving up all the way to a Perfect Miner is faster by approximately 15 seconds, but does not provide the necessary minerals needed to build high tier turrets if the zealot is feeding. Naturally, a probe should pick the one that is better suited for their situation. Ultimately, do what feels right for you or your situation. If you need Tier 11 or Tier 12 turrets, it may be beneficial to sacrifice the speed of your economical growth to hinder that of the zealot's. Feel free to pump out extra Ultra Miners or Legendary Miners as you see fit for your situation. This is only the most optimal way to get an endgame economy. Perfect Miner and near End Game After you have built a Perfect Miner, you can begin to build automated mine 6's and on. As you make more Perfect Miners, you may begin to salvage your less valuable miners until you have 15/15 supply in 14 Perfect Miners and a Ludicrous Miner. You can also build 3 repositories to train 15 additional Perfect Miners. If the zealot is equally strong and can still get feed, he should be able to get final blades soon. Zealot with final blades can quickly destroy ANY wall, but probes eventually have final turrets to counter him. A final turret can kill any zealot within 5 seconds, so you almost cannot lose if you have a final turret, a zealot detector, and the void prison skill (which stuns the zealot for 4 seconds). If you don't have void prison, make multiple final walls to protect the final turrets. When a maxed-out zealot attack, a final wall can be destroyed in a second but your final turrets also do significant damage to him within the second. So by making multiple final walls, you can prevent the zealot from killing you and your final turrets. After you ensure safety, you can make a few automated mine 8s, make a dozen stalkers and hunt for the zealot. Tips: Do not move your stalkers outside of the wall unless you plan on killing the zealot. He will damage them and cause your probe to leave the wall to try to repair them. You can stop this by deactivating auto-repair or holding position, but it is safest to just keep them in your base until you have enough to kill the zealot. There are a 3 scenarios that can happen at End Game. # The First Scenario is that the Zealot will have a final Blade before the probes get a Final Turret, thus ending the game unless a probe manages to hide and make one leading to the Third Scenario # The Second Scenario is that the probes build the final turret before the zealot gets a final blade, which is usually a GG from zealot unless he can still feed # Third Scenario is that they apparently are even, probes have final turrets and the zealot has final blade(s), the probes can counter this "tie" with stalkers, and games may last "forever"